City Folk and Country Folk
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“This scathingly funny comedy of manners” by the rediscovered female Russian novelist “will deeply satisfy fans of 19th-century Russian literature” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
City Folk and Country Folk is a seemingly gentle yet devastating satire of the aristocratic and pseudo-intellectual elites of 1860s Russia. Translated into English for the first time, the novel weaves a tale of manipulation, infatuation, and female assertiveness that takes place one year after the liberation of the empire's serfs.
Upending Russian literary clichés of female passivity and rural gentry benightedness, Sofia Khvoshchinskaya centers her story on a common-sense, hardworking noblewoman and her self-assured daughter living on their small rural estate. Throwing off the imposed sense of duty toward their "betters", these two women ultimately triumph over the urbanites' financial, amorous, and matrimonial machinations.
Sofia Khvoshchinskaya and her writer sisters closely mirror Britain's Brontës, yet Khvoshchinskaya's work contains more of Jane Austen's wit and social repartee, as well as an intellectual engagement reminiscent of Elizabeth Gaskell's condition-of-England novels. Written by a woman under a male pseudonym, this exploration of gender dynamics in post-emancipation Russian offers a new and vital point of comparison with the better-known classics of nineteenth-century world literature.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This scathingly funny comedy of manners from Khvoshchinskaya (1824 1865) will deeply satisfy fans of 19th-century Russian literature. Set in 1862, the story begins with self-important, smarmy Erast Sergeyevich Ovcharov temporarily resettling in the country to rest and enjoy the curative properties of fresh whey. He negotiates renting out the partially completed bathhouse of flustered and self-conscious widow Nastasya Ivanova. Nastasya already has her hands full with the unexpected sudden appearance of her cousin, Anna, an ostensibly deeply religious woman recently ousted from her role as a noblewoman's confidante and travelling companion. Nastasya's attempts to fulfill the requirements of her social status mandate her hospitality towards these supposed superiors, even as they treat her like a naive yokel. Only Nastasya's daughter, level-headed 17-year-old Olenka, sees through the pretensions of bombastic Sergeyevich and whining, faux-religious Anna. As mother and daughter increasingly lose their patience, they also feel their way into the new world of recently emancipated serfs. In this delightful send-up of metropolitan superiority and hypocrisy, the plot reaches a boiling point when Sergeyevich meddles in Olenka's intended betrothal, which is brokered by a supremely smug matchmaker. Favorov's brisk translation and helpful notes make the novel very accessible to present-day readers. This consistently delightful satire will introduce readers to a funnier, more female-centric slant on Russian literature than they may have previously encountered.
